Crossroads
by illuminata79
Summary: As he recovers slowly, Mick is facing both a haunting past and an equally troubling future. A story in four chapters, rated M for the usual bits of bad language.
1. Hearts and Heroes

I know I have used this song before to accompany one of my earliest stories, but I find the lyrics are a perfect match for Mick's state of mind after he has weathered some of the worst storms of his life and finds himself permanently marked by the horrifying impact of the war, unsure of what will become of him, burdened with the memory of the dreadful events he has witnessed - "scared of what's behind and what's before". He knows he can't take anything for granted now, but there's one thing he has set his mind on: get his independence back as best he can.

This is the continued story of his struggle back into life.

**Mumford & Sons - After the Storm**

_And after the storm  
I run and run as the rains come  
And I look up  
On my knees and out of luck, I look up_

_Night has always pushed up day  
You must know life to see decay  
But I won't rot, I won't rot  
Not this mind and not this heart, I won't rot  
_

_And I took you by the hand  
And we stood tall  
And remembered our own land  
What we lived for_

_But there will come a time, you'll see  
With no more tears  
And love will not break your heart  
But dismiss your fears  
Get over your hill and see what you find there  
With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair_

_Now I cling to what I knewI saw exactly what was true, but oh no more  
That's why I hold  
That's why I hold with all I have  
That's why I hold  
_

_And I will die alone, and be left there  
And I guess I'll just go home  
Or God knows where  
Because death is just so full, and man's so small  
I'm scared of what's behind, and what's before_

_But there will come a time ..._

* * *

I was happy.

Blissfully, splendidly happy.

I couldn't remember when I had felt so wonderful before.

Lying on my back in the finest, sun-warmed white sand, I looked up into her face, the tops of lush green palm trees forming a pretty backdrop to her lovely features.

Her wavy red-golden hair had grown very long, and she wore it loose today. I had jokingly tucked a white flower behind her left ear, and she had kept it there.

She was sitting on top of me in all her naked glory, her hands firmly holding on to my shoulders, moving in a harmonious rhythm that sent hot waves of lust and passion rippling wildly through my body.

My own hands rested on her hips, every now and then straying up her back or down along her buttocks, caressing her smooth skin.

It was just the two of us in this leafy cove, us and the sea softly rushing in the background.

Everything was perfect.

Until a sudden whirring noise broke the silence, followed by a deafening explosion.

_Don't they say you never hear the one that's got your name on it?_

Well, I heard it, and I felt it.

A searing flash of pain tore my world apart, and then there was nothing but me and a small expanse of beach framed by thick shrubs that scared me for some curious reason.

I couldn't hear the sea any more. The palms were gone, and so was she.

_Where are you? _I wanted to shout but all I managed was a feeble thin wail.

Somebody hoisted me up and carried me away, and I closed my eyes and just let it happen, leaning my head against a broad chest, feeling a hand caress my hair as if I were a small child.

Next thing I knew I was lying on a bed or couch, a large thick pillow beneath my head, and there were agitated voices surrounding me.

A woman was crying while she spoke in an accusing voice, a voice I knew so well but had not heard in years. "It's all your fault, you made him go! And now look at him. He'll never walk again, and it's all your fault. You knew he would go because you had gone, too. He always wanted to be like you, always, and now …"

"Alice, I never forced him to go. He joined up of his own account. He's old enough to know what he's doing." I knew that voice, too. It was low and gravelly just like my own.

Dad.

Another voice chimed in, "And haven't I always told you boys will be boys, they want their adventures, even if they skin their knees or get the sniffles once in a while?"

Before I could sort out what exactly Dan was doing here with my father still around, another female voice shouted, "Cut it out, all of you! Leave the poor boy alone!"

The other three voices erupted in protest, jangling my nerves, and I wanted to block my ears and scream.

All I was able to do however was to crack open my eyes.

There was Grandma, in her grey cardigan and a faded brown apron dress, forcefully shooing the other three away. "Get out! Go, I said! All of you! And quick!"

Finally, after some more squabbling, they obeyed. I caught a glimpse of their backs as they left the room. Dan's thinning blond hair, Mom's elegant brown chignon, and my father's chiselled profile as he looked back at me with an intense, inscrutable expression before he, too, disappeared through the door.

"Evelyn. Where's Evelyn?" I whispered to my grandmother.

She frowned. "Evelyn? Who is Evelyn? Eliza is here, love. She's come back from Boston to be with you, don't you remember? You'll get married once you're better."

"No, Grandma. I can't marry her", I gasped. "I can't …"

The door opened again, letting in the undefined silhouette of a girl and a blinding shaft of sunlight that stung my eyes.

I squeezed them firmly shut.

And awoke, heart pounding, the bright morning sun in my face, glad that it had been nothing but a strange dream once again.

How I wished for all those haunting dreams to end.

Most frequent were jarring nightmares of death and destruction in a jungle setting that made me relive those blackest days of my life and left me drenched in sweat, my heart racing, my chest constricted with the terrible feeling of having failed to protect my boys.

Sometimes I had those beautiful dreams in which everything was fine for a short, blessed while.

Often, I was back on my island, the splendid turquoise sea stretching infinitely before me as I sat in the sand, legs crossed, sorting pearls.

Once, there had been Nell, perched on my knee on a rock by the French seashore, my arms wrapped around her middle, my lips caressing the back of her neck, or me chasing Eliza along the beach in Maine, brandishing a clump of seaweed whose mere sight made her shriek and flee.

In a way, those lovely nightly visitations were just as awful as the nightmares of torn bodies and mortar blasts and desperate comrades crying out for help I couldn't give because I lay just as mangled.

Awaking from one of those was relief.

Awaking from an idyllic dream to dour reality was devastating.

With this weird dream of my family, it was a mixture of both. Being reminded of my loved ones was hard enough, bringing back the pain of having lost all of them before my twenty-first birthday.

Hearing their shouting match in which they tried senselessly to pin the blame for my injury on one another without ever stopping to speak to me had been disturbing, but what stayed with me afterwards was the reassuring feeling of being picked up and carried to safety, the feeling that there was someone who truly cared.

Had it been my father who'd come to get me out of the danger zone?

I remembered how he used to sweep me up in his arms, laughing merrily, and tuck me into bed every evening with a song or two to lull me into sleep, until he went off to the war that took him away forever.

I remembered the one time my mother had let me sleep in her bed, the night after the crushing news from Europe that my father would never come home.

I could almost feel her body curled around me, holding me close, but not too tightly all night long, seeking to assuage the grief and pain both of us felt at my dad's loss.

I rolled over on my left side, pulling up my good leg, cupping the remainder of the other one with my hand. It didn't hurt quite as badly any more now that the wound had pretty much closed over the sutures. The recurring waves of excruciating pain had given way to a dull burning sensation that wasn't even permanent, but I doubted that I'd ever stop flinching when I touched it.

I wished I could be comforted as easily now as all those years ago when a loving cuddle from Mom or Grandma and their assuring that everything would be alright had sufficed to cure almost every ill.

Would I have wanted either of them to see me like this?

It would have broken my mother's heart to find some of her worst fears confirmed – that the horrible incident she'd always dreaded had indeed come to pass and left me, the son she had always treasured so much and sought so obsessively to keep safe from every kind of harm, disfigured and disabled.

No, she wouldn't have been able to give me much solace. Her sorrow would have made things worse for me, not better.

But Grandma - she would have done it right. How I would have loved to go home to the little house in Maine to recuperate under her care.

I could see her very vividly in my mind's eye, a small pragmatic woman with a stentorian voice, busily fussing about me, spoiling me with food and trying to make me as comfortable as she possibly could, all the while chattering ceaselessly, which would have got on Grandpa's nerves.

Grandpa.

What would _he_ do if he saw me now?

In his way, he had been the sensitive one among the two of them, particularly when it was about me, a fact he knew to hide well. Or so he thought.

He'd have sat with me as often as he could, grimly optimistic, pointing out all the silver linings of the large black cloud that had come over me, telling me I'd run five miles in record time once I had got used to my prosthetic leg, and then he'd have excused himself, presumably for a visit to the bathroom or to go fetch me a drink or a book or something, but he would have gone outside to puff his pipe instead, angrily wiping the moisture from his sharp blue eyes from whose corners the wrinkles radiated like dark sun's rays, deepened by this typical seafarer's squint.

After a few minutes, he'd have come back inside to give me another pep talk, thinking I hadn't seen through him.

Too bad that this was merely a mind game. Grandma's common sense and practical support as well as Grandpa's staunch backing and belief in me might have been just what I needed to get through this, back into a halfway normal life, but they were long gone.

Most of my fellow wounded servicemen had someone to come home to, someone they loved, someone they trusted, someone who would be shocked at first to see their wounds and scars and disfigurements but would also be ready to assist with what they couldn't do on their own, to encourage and support them without being patronizing or overly commiserative – a wife, a girlfriend, a mother, a family or at least a close friend or two.

I had no one.

Or rather, no one to come home to, no one whose whereabouts I knew.

No one who knew where I was and what had happened to me.

No one who even knew I was alive.

I tried to shake the thought of Evelyn. After all, I had decided long ago that I did not want her to see me like that.

Another realization struck me hard, something I had not thought of before.

There might have been someone else to come home to if I had not lost touch with them all these years ago.

Jess and Janie.

I wondered if I should make another attempt at tracking down the girls.

But no, I couldn't.

Apart from not knowing where to start, what would I do in the unlikely case I succeeded? Call them up and say, "Sorry you haven't heard from me for so long, but it would be so nice to see you again. Oh, and by the way, I've been crippled in the war, so could you please look after me a bit?"

Ridiculous.

I should have tried to find them much earlier. It was too late now.

Too late to search for my sisters, too late to search for Evelyn.

I'd have to make it alone, again.

I would have trouble living on my own, at least in the beginning, but I guessed I would be okay eventually, kind of. After all, I was no stranger to solitude, and it might be better if I learned quickly to get by without help. Better than burdening someone else with my useless presence.

Amelia's breezy voice shook me out of my morose musing. "Good morning, sleepyhead. Don't you want to get up for your big day?"

Oh _crap._

The bizarre dream and the chain of thoughts it had set off had entirely taken my mind off the great event, although everyone had been talking of little else during the last few days, ever since it had transpired that some Army general was passing through Brisbane on his way back to the States and was planning to visit the hospital for a belated Purple Heart ceremony. And it wasn't enough just to have him walk through the wards and pin the medals to the men's pillows the way these things were usually done. No, someone had decided to make a big fuss and have a celebration in the hospital gardens.

Most of the staff were mightily excited about the upcoming ceremony, Raffles in particular. She had made anyone with more than an inch of hair on their heads get a haircut in honour of the occasion, and everyone who was able to was expected to wear their best uniforms.

I thought the whole thing was pretty overrated, and so I told Amelia sarcastically, "You know just how keen I am on that piece of brass." I grimaced. "As if I needed a stupid medal to make people see that I haven't survived that fucking war unscathed."

"Come _on",_ she said. "You know you deserve a bit of recognition for all you've been through. Eat your breakfast, I'll be back later with your fancy clothes."

When she returned, she brought along my dress uniform. She brushed it out carefully while I took care of the shoes. I had asked her to let me do that, for some reason I didn't know myself.

It was strange to see my pair of brown dress shoes, as good as new, fully aware that I might never wear the right one again. I spit-shined it anyway, it would have felt wrong not to.

I took my time about it, working so slowly that Amelia finally snatched the second shoe, which I had been polishing for minutes, away from me and resolutely said, "That's enough now, you're gonna wear out the leather if you keep on like that. Time to rise and shine in that uniform of yours."

"Which I can't even put on without help", I retorted acidly.

She rolled her eyes. "Don't sell yourself short, Carpenter. I know you can manage alone very well. Go ahead and prove it." She laid the jacket out on the bed along with the rest of the uniform and crossed her arms over her chest.

Of course, she was right. I'd had plenty of time to learn to get dressed by myself, and the only thing she did for me was fold up and fasten the empty trouser leg. This was a task I happily left her to do. It always made me cringe because it rendered my disability so blatantly evident.

When she was finished, she had me stand up and stepped back to give me the once-over, her head cocked to one side. After she had adjusted my tie by some fraction of an inch, she nodded, satisfied. "That's a handsome corporal", was her tongue-in-cheek verdict. "A picture-book hero."

"Yeah, sure. Just a little damaged, this hero is. But the medal he's gonna get today will certainly put things right", I replied scathingly.

She gave me a piercing look, one eyebrow raised.

"Yes, I know. I should be glad I'm still alive", I sighed. "But to be honest, I'd be even gladder if I'd been spared the honour of being a hero and seen my boys survive instead. And I'd have preferred to walk out of that shit on my own two legs, too."

"Of course. I wasn't meaning to say you wouldn't." She narrowed her eyes, straightened up on her tiptoes and gently nudged my cap into the perfect angle on my head. "But still I want you to look your best today … and _yes, _I know what you're thinking. You're _not _bowing out, Corporal! I want you to go out there and collect your medal. It may not mean anything to you now but maybe it will later. When you show it off to your grandkids, for example."

This was not the time to tell her there would be no grandkids. She didn't know I had no family, at least none I was still in touch with, and that it was highly unlikely I'd ever be a father. And it was time to go outside anyway.

* * *

It was a perfect spring day with a sky of such deep cerulean blue that it almost looked artificial, flecked with just a few little white fair-weather clouds.

Three rows of mismatched folding chairs had been set up on the lawn in a wide half-circle, facing a low dais, and there was even a long table of refreshments to one side, complete with spotless white linen and some towering flower arrangements.

With cheery birdsong filling the air and the sweet scent of various bushes and trees in full bloom, the small hospital gardens seemed ready to host a lavish wedding or a festive birthday party.

The only thing that disturbed this illusion were all the cripples flocking to the place. They came limping on crutches and walking sticks, or they walked flawlessly but cradled a slung arm or tried to hold a bandaged head or scarred face up high as they gradually filled the rows of chairs while the wheelchairs of those too weak or too mangled to walk were lined up at the edges.

Welcome to the parade of heroes, I thought sarcastically. What a lovely little freak show.

Brian waved to me from the middle of the second row, signalling me that he had saved a seat for me. I shook my head and gestured at the crutches. With most other chairs in the row already taken, I didn't want to run the risk of tripping on anyone's foot or crutch and go down yet again, with everybody looking on. Instead, I settled for a place at the back and hoped it would be over soon.

Brigadier General Anthony C. Lewis arrived at ten o'clock sharp, an imposing figure, tall and erect in his impeccable uniform. His aide-de-camp looked dwarfed next to him, a diminutive dark-haired man with twinkly eyes and a slight but noticeable limp who wore a lieutenant's insignia.

Lewis greeted the crowd in the rousing tone of a man used to speaking in public and launched into an address extolling the virtues and courage of the American soldier and waxing lyrical about the U.S.'s brave fight against Hitler and his cronies, sprinkling in a few jokes that were rather lame but set off loud ripples of laughter nevertheless.

I thought the best thing about the speech was that it was mercifully short.

Afterwards, Lewis did his circuit, with his sidekick carrying along the box of medals, and pinned one after the other to the breasts of uniform jackets and bathrobes alike.

I was among the last to receive theirs. I nodded to the general's irrelevant congratulations and praise and politely thanked him.

When they had gone on to the next man, I wryly glanced down at the brass heart gleaming on my chest and felt nothing special at the sight.

Should I be proud now? Happy? Exhilarated?

What difference did a Purple Heart make to my fucked-up existence?

It would neither get me a job nor make me whole again.

In fact, this bit of ribbon and metal was a very small compensation for an amputated leg and a heap of broken dreams.

Barely waiting for the ceremony to end, I sidled away to duck into the shadow of a big frangipani tree where I had glimpsed a few spare chairs.

Most of the other attendees were milling around the table of refreshments across the lawn, and I thought myself alone and undetected when I sat down, leaned the crutches against the tree trunk and searched my pockets for a smoke, cursing under my breath when I realized I'd left my cigarettes in the khaki pants I usually wore.

"What are you doing here all alone, Corporal?" a bright voice called out.

Turning my head, I saw the limping lieutenant, Lewis's aide-de-camp, approaching briskly.

I gave him a weary look and a little shrug. I wasn't in the mood for small talk.

The man wasn't easily deterred. Instead of leaving me alone, which was what I'd hoped for, he pulled up a chair, asking belatedly, "May I?"

I shrugged again and said noncommittally, "Feel free."

He sat down and prodded once more, "Won't you join the celebration?"

"I don't think there's much to celebrate about getting hit by a sniper and even less about being short of a leg", I replied moodily.

The lieutenant remained unfazed. "Hey, chin up, Corporal. You may not be going back to battle – figuratively speaking, of course, not that there'd be any need for anyone to go to battle right now – but you can be sure to have a good life ahead of you, despite that." He gestured at my stump, and before I could argue that he had no goddamn idea what he was talking about, he had hitched up the hem of his left trouser leg to show the metal glint of an artificial limb.

A stupidly surprised "Oh" was all I managed.

"Ripped off right below the knee. Mortar shell at Utah Beach, no half-hour after we'd landed", he said matter-of-factly and dropped the neatly creased cloth back over the prosthetic leg. "I know it's not something you can imagine now, having a good life. I remember very well how I was feeling at first when they told me they had not been able to save my leg. And yes, of course there are a few things you and I won't be doing again, but there's a lot more you _can_ actually still do. You'll get used to your prosthetic leg, they're pretty good these days, you'll go back to work, and there will be nothing to keep you from having a fairly normal life. You'll see you can really do most anything you want to do. Exercise. Swim. Drive a car. Oh, and what's most important of course, make love to your woman." At that, he flashed me a conspiratorial grin.

I knew I would not make love to my woman again – any woman, in fact, unless I came across some pervert with a particular penchant for cripples.

The thought of sharing Evelyn's bed again the invalid I had become, a penniless embittered ruin with nothing to my name but difficulties and pain and a bunch of dreadful indelible memories I'd have preferred to forget, was so grotesque, so absurd, that I gave a cynical joyless snort of laughter.

"Don't take it personal, Lieutenant", I said by way of explanation when he gave me a puzzled look, "but I guess you and I are too different by far for this conversation to lead anywhere. It's nice of you to try and cheer me up, and thanks for that nice little heart, too, but I don't think you can actually help me much. Unless the Army has a special program for rehabilitating one-legged pearl divers, my life _is_ screwed up, whatever you say. I don't assume there is a training scheme for learning to sail and swim and dive with your leg chopped off at the thigh?" I raised an ironic eyebrow.

"I fully understand, Corporal", he said, a little sobered, leaned over and patted me on the shoulder. "You haven't quite come to terms with your new situation. That's okay. Take your time about it, but don't give up on yourself too easily. I didn't come to accept my injury over night either, but now my life is fine again, really."

"Well, that's great for you. With two real knees remaining and a comfy job, you've got a _little_ advantage over me. And please don't start to give me any crap about how losing your leg was actually a stroke of luck", I added crabbily. "That's _not_ going to comfort me because I'm not going to believe it. If you'll excuse me now?"

I hastily reached for my crutches in an attempt to rise and leave swiftly, but all I managed was to knock one of them to the ground. So much for a dignified exit.

The lieutenant was quick to help me, but I didn't appreciate his assistance except for a clipped "Thanks". Feeling humiliated again, I hobbled off, half expecting him to follow me. Thank God he didn't.

I decided it might be best to blend in with the crowd in order to remain unmolested by well-meaning strangers. I saw Ronnie Craven waving at me from where he was sitting with a cluster of other roommates and made my way across the lawn to join them.

Someone had organised a gramophone and put on a swing record, music I would have loved if I could have _felt _it the way I used to.

Sadly, for some reason, music had ceased to move me, and the lively tune completely failed to lift my spirits.

I had always needed music around me, all my life. My father's lullabies in earliest childhood were among my most treasured memories of him, and the piano had been what saw me through many bouts of homesickness in Missouri. Music had helped me earn my living in Portland, and the old gramophone and the collection of more or less scratched records had been my only little luxury in my island home.

Now I was unable to relate to the music, it left me completely cold. I heard it all right, but it didn't get through to me. It was merely background noise at best and extremely unnerving at worst. Sometimes, when I'd sat on my bench outside the kitchens and had heard the same popular hits blaring through an open window over and over, I wanted to go in and smash something, preferably the radio.

Brian beamed at me when I sat next to him and proudly showed me his Purple Heart.

"Now you're officially a hero, mate", I said with a smile, trying to hide how much it saddened me to see his child-like enthusiasm about a medal commemorating the wound that had left his body almost intact but cost him a good part of his sanity.

"You're a hero, too", he replied with a big grin and pointed at my chest. "Where have you been all the time? Have you had a sandwich? They're great!"

When I shook my head, he jumped up and dashed to the buffet to get me a sandwich and a drink.

I watched him with a wistful eye. What was to become of the poor chap with his little-boy mind once he was discharged?

And what was to become of _me?_

I chewed on the sandwich Brian had brought me, but I couldn't have said what it tasted like.

This incessant wheel of miserable thoughts was rotating in my head again, and I took my leave of my comrades rather fast when I'd finished eating in order to absent myself from the merry crowd and sneak back inside, to be alone in the ward for once. I was sure nobody would miss me out there.

I was halfway down the corridor when I heard some ominous creaking from behind and a voice shouted, "Out of the way, Carpenter!"

Bill Adams and his buddy, Frank Finnegan, came racing along the linoleum floor in their wheelchairs. I flattened myself against the wall as best I could to avoid getting bowled over, shaking my head half exasperated, half amused as I watched them whiz around the corner.

I had not yet made it to my destination when they came back at a somewhat lower speed. Bill stopped in front of me and grinned, "Why don't you get yourself a chair and join us?"

I couldn't help smiling wryly at his exuberance and replied, "Jeez, Bill, you know I'm too old for that kind of crap. You two go bash your heads in all you want. You're hardly more than kids after all."

"Watch it, old man!" Bill hollered cheerfully, pointing a finger at me, his mischievous dark eyes sparkling. "This kid's a staff sergeant!"

"Yeah, sure. Can't salute you with my hands full, though. Now go back outside to play, kiddo."

Frank, the taller and quieter of the two, chuckled. "Good one, Carpenter." Punching his friend in the arm, he added, "Serves you right, Staff Sergeant William J. Big Mouth!"

Bill stuck his tongue out at him, and they set off for the gardens once more, both of them laughing.

I envied them at this moment.

They had each other, had been as close as Saint and I since their basic training, and they had even been wounded together, in the same battle, on the same day. Bill had got hit badly in the thigh when he tried to rescue Frank whose left leg had been torn away by a mortar shell, and both of them had ended up just like me, with one leg amputated above the knee.

They didn't seem to take it as hard as I did. I wished I had their youthful resilience. They still seemed to view life as a big adventure and their serious injuries merely as a hurdle to get over and go on pretty much as before.

I had once overheard Bill trying to comfort his Australian girlfriend who had come to see him. She had appeared much more devastated about the loss of his leg than he did himself. He was that kind of guy, always hopeful, determined to make the best of any situation, bouncing back astonishingly fast, and his positive attitude seemed to rub off on Frank who would have enough reason to complain and pity himself, a young man of twenty-two with a leg gone and tiny shrapnel splinters lodged painfully in the flesh all over his body.

I wished I could take a page of those kids' playbook. But maybe I just wasn't born that way.


	2. Day Pass

Shortly after the ceremony, I was transferred to the rehab ward in the opposite wing of the building. The doctors and Amelia hailed it as another step forward, but I was not too enthusiastic. A step forward to _where?_

The unresolved question of what to do with my life kept churning in my mind. I knew I couldn't stay here forever, but I had no idea where to go and what to do once I got out. Any occupation I could think of that would be possible with my disability seemed so unappealing that I didn't wish to pursue the thought any further. At the same time I was impatient and restless and hungry for a change.

I had always compensated heartache and sorrow with working until I dropped, with keeping myself busy as much as I could so I'd be too focused or too tired to brood a lot, but those days were over for good.

Now there wasn't much to keep me occupied, except for reading and playing cards with Brian and attending physical therapy which finally included getting used to a prosthetic leg.

I had set a lot of hope on that after what the lieutenant had told me at the garden party, but I found it surprisingly difficult, strenuous and painful, and was usually glad to take it off after a bit of practice. Although they encouraged me to put it on when I walked around the ward or went outside into the gardens, I hardly ever did, finding I felt more secure without it.

The therapist dismissed me casually when I told him about my trouble and said all this was pretty normal in the beginning, I'd simply have to keep on trying.

I was not convinced. To me, it felt more like the leg wasn't fitting me properly, but of course I was no expert.

Then one day I removed it after some rather long training and realized with a sense of panic that my thigh was quite chafed and sore, considerably reddened and ominously warm to the touch.

I had seen that kind of thing before, and I didn't like it at all. I wondered if I, with my recent medical history, might be particularly susceptible to infections and if everything was going to happen all over again.

What would they do if this, too, turned septic? Cut off another slice of me if the antibiotics didn't help?

Probably. The doctors would never just leave me to my fate, even if that might have been my preferred option.

Hastily, I put my pants back on and decided to say nothing for the moment. I was afraid of alerting anyone to my problem, of hearing another doctor give me fatal news I didn't want to hear.

But I knew full well that I couldn't keep it to myself forever. Something had to be done about it, and I could not possibly put on the leg with the skin all raw and tender and pretend everything was fine at the training session scheduled for the next morning.

In the end, I confided in Amelia when she came over to see me after her shift had ended. She didn't laugh at my fear but was quick to recognize what was troubling me so. Once again, she managed to reassure me quite a bit when she said she'd often seen the like and that all I needed was a few days' break from the artificial leg and some ointment to soothe the irritated skin.

Unable to take part in the usual daily exercise routine with my thigh out of order, I decided to apply for a day pass, for I couldn't stand another day of idleness and boredom. I needed to get out, to pay a visit to the real world for the first time since the three-week break in Australia we had been given after our mission in the Philippines had been completed.

The bus ride into the city was easier than I had feared, and it was in a way elating to step out into an utterly nondescript and wonderfully normal downtown street, lined with shops and cafés, filled with people in civilian clothes – men in shirtsleeves, women in colourful lightweight dresses, kids in shorts or summer smocks.

There was only one deviant figure in this tableau of a perfectly ordinary early-summer Thursday: the tall haggard stranger in Army-issue khaki pants and shirt, both too loose for his thin frame, who was attracting quite a lot of attention as he was slowly making his way through the crowd, a little awkward on his pair of crutches.

That was something I had not been prepared for, getting stared at so much.

Children's openly curious looks were not the worst by far. They didn't know better, and I didn't blame them for gawking at my obvious defect.

It was the quickly averted eyes of their parents that stung and made me feel like an outcast, the pity-tinged smiles of passersby, the young woman throwing me a flirty glance before she, too, looked elsewhere after finding the fault in the picture.

As I was having a cup of coffee and a slice of cake at a small café, a woman and her son of perhaps six years sat at the next table.

The boy looked at me and suddenly broke into a sincere gap-toothed grin. I smiled back at him, but my smile froze when he whispered rather loudly, "Have you seen the man over there, Mommy?" and she replied in a low unctuous voice, "Shush, Peter, not so loud, and _please_ don't stare. That's not nice. He must have lost his leg in the war, poor brave man. He's been a soldier, see the stripes on his sleeve?"

Peter, nonplussed, looked around at me gingerly, trying to catch a stealthy glance at my legs, before he said to his mother, "But _you_ are staring, too, Mommy! And I wasn't looking at his leg at all! Haven't you seen he's got a seahorse on his arm?"

I managed another weak smile. I loved the kid for noticing my tattoo and not my disability, as much as I loathed his mother for giving her son that prejudiced, condescending war hero bullshit before even listening to what exactly the little one had been so excited about.

She, like everyone else, only seemed to notice the leg that was gone, while apparently nobody bothered to see the man that was still there.

In the end, I was almost glad to return to the familiar surroundings of the hospital, confining as they might be. At least I did not stick out like a sore thumb there, among all the other invalids.

This trip into town had made one thing very clear to me: I must not give up on the prosthetic leg, no matter how much it hurt and how difficult to handle it might be.

If I wanted to attain a semblance of normalcy, making this work was the only chance I had. Better to be the guy with the funny limp and bite back the pain than remain the one-legged veteran forever.

I had no desire to spend the rest of my life enduring all those eyes on me - the curious, the compassionate, the contemptuous looks trained on the highly visible mark of the war I had not believed to be mine until I got snagged in its tangled widespread web after all.

* * *

My fresh determination to endure all the painful exercise in order to walk on two legs again lifted my spirits considerably, as did the awakening of nature in springtime. I doubled my efforts and learned to spend more and more time with the artificial limb on. The therapist had, of course, been right in that I would get used to it.

Amelia beamed at me when I got up to greet her. It was still a little shaky, and supported by the crutches, but I was standing on two feet nevertheless.

"Great job, Carpenter. You've made amazing progress the last couple of weeks. Guess you'll be out of here quite soon now", she said and squeezed my arm. "Good for you - but you know what, I'm gonna miss you."

"Don't get too excited", I warned her. "I'm not all that good yet, and I don't have a clue where to go once I get dismissed."

"Home, where else?" She frowned at me.

"Good joke", I said, hurrying to tell her a bit of my story when I realized I had sounded rather testy. I ended my tale by, "And so I ended up a pearl trader in the Trobriands."

"A pearl trader in the Trobriands", she repeated after I was finished. "Now you're pulling my leg, Carpenter."

"Nope. It's what I did for more than five years until that goddamn war ended it. Gets kind of tricky, and scary, to dive for pearls when the Japs are shelling the place."

"Jesus. Now I see what you mean. That's a difficult job to go back to with …" She looked at my leg meaningfully.

"Exactly. So I guess I'm kind of stuck here for the moment. Maybe I'll just stay at the hospital and help count out the pills or something."

"Don't be silly, Carpenter. You know what happened last time you got near a bottle of pills."

She was the only one who could get away with such a casual aside at the time I'd tried to take my own life, and I gave her an amusedly reproving look. "Can you think of something better?" I asked.

"Phew." My strange situation left even Amelia at a loss for words or ideas, but her eternal optimism broke through once more. "Not off the top of my head … but something will pop up for you, I'm absolutely positive."

"If you say so." I thought otherwise, but I knew she would not hear of it if I protested.

"It will, mark my words."

Her way of refusing to see the bad side of things unless it couldn't be helped was at a time annoying and uplifting, and I gave her an exasperated half-grin before we turned to a more mundane chat about the latest book she'd given me to read. None of us mentioned my past or my future again.


	3. Mail Call

"Mail for you."

I didn't even look up until the envelope smacked into the tabletop next to the scratched faux-leather armchair I was occupying in the common room with a dog-eared paperback copy of a Thomas Hardy classic. I never received any mail, and I had long before stopped envying those who did.

I picked up the letter, turned it over to check the sender and was about to call out to Nurse Liatelli that this must be an error, then decided to rip the thin air mail envelope open anyway. After all it clearly had my name on it in a spiky unfamiliar handwriting. I might as well take a look at what had been sent to me by mistake, even if I had no idea who 1st Lt F.M. Chertreux was.

I scanned the letter quickly, not expecting much, ready to acknowledge there had indeed been an error and it wasn't meant for me after all.

The spidery scrawl _was_ directed at me.

Astonished, I read it again more carefully before I dropped it into my lap, eyebrows raised, frowning.

Obviously, the scrawny lieutenant who had accompanied the Brigadier General on his visit to the hospital had taken pity on this homeless crippled U.S. Army corporal and was offering me a job as a supplies officer at an army base on the East Coast.

Jeez. I'd never pictured myself as a member of the chairborne divisions, one of those dreadful paper-pushers nobody ever took seriously.

Yet that might be as good as it got for me now.

What were you expecting, I asked myself. You're in no shape to take up some physically demanding job when you can barely manage to walk.

But still … a _desk _job!

I saw myself in my mind's eye, slowly turning as grey and dusty as the files in the iron cabinets along the walls of my tiny office, weeks and months passing uneventfully as I sat day in, day out with my head bowed over inventory lists and invoices and receipts. I might as well get some green eyeshades to make the laughable picture complete.

Yes, it would be the sensible thing to do, but the thought gave me the creeps.

This was not what I wanted from life, not at all.

What I wanted was to feel the sun, the rain, the elements. I wanted to ride the waves and brave the weather, swim in the cool pleasant Pacific waters and plunge into the depth of the reef to find my pearl shells.

I wanted callused hands and aching muscles from hard, physical work that left you with a satisfying exhaustion at the end of your day.

I wanted my boat and my little house on the beach, the great wide open sea and _freedom_.

Instead, my world had shrunk to consist of nothing more than hospitals and barracks, uniforms and regulations, a world where the most exciting prospect ahead was eventually getting promoted to staff sergeant.

I folded the letter into a neat little square and stuffed into my breast pocket to keep it out of sight.

I knew I was being pretty ungrateful to find fault with this job offer. I guessed I should have been glad that Chertreux had been kind enough to remember me and intervene on my behalf. I wouldn't have thought anything would come out of it when he had sought me out in my hospital room because he wanted to find out more about me after he had somehow sensed that I had not been joking about the pearl-diving when we'd spoken in the garden.

I guessed I should have telegraphed him immediately to happily accept the job.

But I couldn't just now. I needed a bit of time to think, even if it was for no other reason than to pretend I still had a choice of what to do with my life.

In the end, I gave in to reason after all, having pondered the subject for a couple of days.

I still wasn't particularly taken with the idea, but I needed to replenish my meagre funds, and despite the fact that it was unexciting work, it would keep me occupied, which was a good thing after that long, more or less idle time at the hospital.

It was painful to admit, but I needed to face the fact that my life would never be the same.

A good part of it was over once and for all, and the rest of it I might never love as I had come to love my solitary happiness in the Trobriands, as I had only just begun to love the thought of having found my soulmate.

However, after the deadly menace of the infection had been vanquished and I had not succeeded in killing myself on that desperate day in the dispensary, this much was sure: for the time being, I was going to live, like it or not, and I was not ready to lead an entirely useless, dependent invalid's life. I was not sick or crippled enough to spend the rest of my days in some caregiving facility (not that I would have wanted to), so I had to find some way to make a living.

Yet I hadn't had much of an idea how to actually achieve this until Chertreux's letter arrived. What he offered me was not at all what I craved, but a boring perspective was presumably better than no perspective at all.

On the plus side, I wouldn't have to worry about sleeping quarters and food and housekeeping, and the base was situated somewhere near Atlantic City, which meant I'd be living on or near the coast. This was a tiny bit of comfort, even if I guessed there would be more city, or barracks, than Atlantic in it for me. What was more, it was also near one of the large specialized amputee centers the army had set up. I hated finding myself in a situation that forced me to consider things like that, but there was no denying that being close to some specialists worth their salt might be helpful in case any problem with my leg arose.

So I placed a long-distance call to New Jersey, and we agreed I'd ship out to the States in early December.

Until then, I vowed to step up my efforts with the new leg even more. I wanted to be able to walk with nothing more than a cane for support once I started working.

My therapist was impressed by the good progress I was making, and I slowly, tentatively began to look forward to my departure in a way. I hoped leaving Australia and the Pacific area would help me get over all I had been through, hoped putting a certain distance between myself and the places where I had lost so much would make the haunting memories fade into oblivion faster.

I had only two weeks to go when I needed to get up in the middle of the night and take a leak.

Only half awake and additionally dazed by the head cold that had plagued me since I'd got wet out in the garden on a rainy day, I didn't even open my eyes more than a crack when I jumped out of bed the way I had done countless times in my life – the only difference being that I was missing a leg now, which I only remembered in my sleep-addled state when I crashed to the floor, going down on my right side with my full weight.

"Fuck, fuck, _fuck!" _I cursed under my breath and looked around in the dim light from the corridor if anyone had seen me. Keith Cedars in the bed next to mine certainly hadn't. He was dead to the world, snoring loudly. _Good, _I thought.

I took stock of my body and didn't think there was any damage done worse than a few bruises. I had been pretty lucky not to hit my head on the iron frame of the bed, though.

Grabbing the foot of the bed, I dragged myself up and sat on the edge of the mattress for a moment. _How could you possibly forget your leg had been amputated?_

My urge to go to the toilet had dissipated with the shock of the accident, so I lay down again and tried to go back to sleep, which was difficult with my nose half blocked.

There was also a dull ache in my leg, but I didn't make much of it. I was used to all kinds of pain arising in the stump from time to time, and the fall certainly would have taken its toll.

When I awoke in the morning, to my great relief everything seemed to be fine.

Things stayed that way for almost a week, until one day a piercing pain made me gasp involuntarily when I had walked a few steps with the leg on. I wondered if this kind of sharp jab was a new variety of phantom pain, for it felt as if someone were driving a knife or nail through my nonexistent instep.

I hoped it would go away as suddenly as it had popped up and struggled through the daily training with clenched teeth, managing to keep my agony from the therapist.

Afterwards, I inspected my thigh for any signs of injury, but there was nothing. The skin wasn't even chafed. Still it hurt like hell even after I'd taken the prosthetic leg off.

Damn, what _was_ that? _Not another complication, please not,_ I implored some unspecified higher being. Now that I had more or less come to terms with my decision for the Atlantic City job, I wanted to go through with it by all means. The last thing I could use now was another setback.

But that was exactly what it turned out to be. The next morning I couldn't even bear to put on the leg. The moment it touched the stump was pure torment, and I caved in and asked a nurse to get me a doctor.

The cold-eyed young man who came to my bedside after a while cast a fleeting look at my leg without any proper examination and dismissed my complaints as a particularly nasty case of phantom pain, despite my account of the fall I'd taken recently.

He had apparently made up his mind that I was just another malingerer and left me, pained and angry, to my own devices.

Amelia exploded when I told her in the evening. She still came to see me almost every day, my one faithful ally in this place, and she promised to speak to Dr Riley, the surgeon who'd performed my operation, to look into my mysterious problem.

It took several X rays until the source of the excruciating pain was finally located. Apparently, my nightly accident had caused a tiny splinter of the severed bone that had before been embedded in the flesh without doing any harm to wander and get lodged just below the surface of the skin, where it stung painfully under the slightest pressure.

"We'll have to remove that surgically", Riley said matter-of-factly.

This meant delaying my departure, a fact I didn't like, but neither did I want to endure that pain for longer than necessary and certainly not on a long overseas journey. So I said goodbye to my travel plans for now and agreed to have the procedure the next day.

It was just my luck that this didn't happen. My cold made another appearance over night and had me sneezing and shivering by the morning so that Riley refused to operate.

I was too groggy to protest much and simply stayed in bed for a few days, feeling sorry for myself and cursing my eternal misfortune. Amelia tried to cheer me up but I only groused at her, so she limited herself to making me drink gallons of foul-tasting herbal tea and telling me I was getting quite intolerable lately, which did make me smile a little weakly.

And like before, she was the first person I saw when I woke up after surgery, hot and queasy and slightly sick.

"Here we go again, huh?" she said when I opened my eyes. "And I thought I was done taking your temperature and changing your dressing."

"You know, I'm like a bad penny. Always turning up again." My attempt at a crooked grin failed when a wave of nausea made me gag.

"Feeling rotten, are you?" She produced a cool flannel and wiped my sweaty forehead. "Try to sleep a bit more. Just sleep it off."

I did just that after she'd told me that everything had gone well, although I felt I had spent way too much time in various stages of unconsciousness these past months.

Next time I came around, she was there again. She hastily busied herself with my case sheet, but I knew she had been standing at the foot of my bed, just watching me, maybe hoping I'd wake up any moment.

"How's things?" she asked.

"Better", I replied. "When are they going to let me out of here?"

"End of the week, I think", she said. As I grimaced in dismay, she added, "I can't think of any reason why you shouldn't be allowed to get up if you feel like it, unless you're still feeling wobbly. I'll tell Myers to get your crutches for you. Oh, by the way, you will have to do without me for a few days. I'm leaving for Sydney after my shift to visit my cousin for a week. Haven't seen her in ages."

"Oh. Yes." I felt rather let down, although she didn't owe me anything. But she had been there for me so constantly, looking in on me religiously, that I had begun to take her presence for granted. "I mean, have a good time with your cousin, and safe travels."

She gave me a suspicious look but said nothing except, "Thanks. And, chin up, Carpenter. You'll be leaving for your new life pretty soon."


	4. Amelia's Surprise

When Amelia returned, she found me outside, reading in one of the lawn chairs scattered all over the grass, eager to soak up a bit of sunlight and warmth after having been confined indoors for so long by the surgery and bad weather. She had a big smile on her face and waved to me as she approached, still in her civilian clothes.

"Hey, Carpenter! You look so much better." She pulled up another chair and sat down. "You won't believe where I went."

"Not to Sydney?" I asked quizzically.

"Yes, of course I was in Sydney, but guess what Nora and I did on Saturday? We attended the most exciting book presentation. There was a young woman, some kind of researcher, reading from the book she'd written and showing some photos, too. You won't believe what her book is about: she was living with some savage tribe in the Trobriand Islands! She's been making quite a big wave in the local press with her story since the book came out very recently, and I could hardly believe my ears when she mentioned the Trobriands. That's where you said you'd lived, isn't it? Could it be that you even _met_ her? Uh … are you okay?"

My heart had begun to race. Could it be … of course it _must _be her.

I only nodded to Amelia's question, and she rattled on, "She's incredible. Just imagine, there's that feisty young woman, Evelyn Spence is her name, no older than twenty-five, I'd say, all alone among those savages after her husband's died of some disease, and she's not running off for the next ship home but stays right on there and does her own research, and writes her book! Really, really amazing. You'd never think she'd have it in her from the look of her. You know, she's actually quite small and dainty, and … _Carpenter_?"

I didn't react. Instead, I finished her description in a voice suddenly gone hoarse. "And she's red-haired, with fair skin and brown eyes. She's very determined, she's got an iron will and you certainly don't want to cross her, but when she laughs, you just can't help laughing along, and when she smiles, she lights up the darkest day. She's not a good dancer, but otherwise she's very fit, and not afraid of anything. She'll go scaling the highest palm tree if she's set her mind on it. And although she's used to a certain wealth and comfort, she can make do with a cot in a palm-leaf hut or even a mat on the floor of a cave."

Amelia was gaping at me. "You _do _know her! Oh my _gosh,_ how do you know her so well?"

"There was a time when I thought I'd spend the rest of my life with her", I said calmly. "A wonderful, blessed time. But that was before … this happened." I brushed my right leg lightly with my hand.

"So she _left_ you because of …?" Amelia's eyes narrowed in disbelief and disappointment.

"No. She doesn't even know that I'm … that I lost my leg. We … we got separated earlier in the war and lost track of each other. Actually, I still owe her my finest pearl."

"You know, she's got a reading planned in Cleveland. It's just a short train ride from here."

Half a year ago I wouldn't have hesitated for a second, but now I said, "It's a lovely thought, Amelia, but I can't. Not … not the way I am now. She deserves better than a crippled soldier."

Amelia snorted angrily. "Bullshit! Any woman could count herself lucky to get you, Carpenter, leg or no leg."

I was adamant. "No, I can't do that. But … but what about you?"

"_Me?"_

"Yes … maybe you could go to Cleveland and give her the pearl for me."

"Carpenter – are you _nuts?"_ She was really furious now. "You get the chance to meet the woman who's obviously the love of your life, and you send another _woman_ round instead? If she loves you, and I definitely think she does from the way she spoke of an American trader who became her friend, she's not going to dump you just because you came home from the war with a leg missing, for God's sake! Be a man and _go see her!"_

Astounded at her bossy tone, I gave a mock salute and, knowing she wasn't going to take no for an answer, replied, "Yes, Ma'am!" to have her out of my hair for the moment.

I was anything but sure I would be going, but when Amelia had left, I remained sitting in my lawn chair for a long time, my book closed and forgotten in my lap, staring pensively ahead.

What I saw was not grass and trees and other patients but red-golden hair and warm brown eyes and a smile that made the darkest day bright.

* * *

_She lives.  
If it be so, it is a chance which does redeem all sorrows that ever I have felt.  
(Shakespeare, King Lear)  
_


End file.
